Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Part 16

When a mast tree is to be felled, much preparation is necessary. So tall a stick, without any limbs nearer the ground than eighty or a hundred feet, is in great danger of breaking in the fall. To prevent this the workmen have a contrivance which they call bedding the tree, which is thus executed. They know in what direction the tree will fall; and they cut down a number of smaller trees which grow in that direction; or if there be none, they draw others to the spot, and place them so that the falling tree may lodge on their branches; which breaking or yielding under its pressure, render its fall easy and safe. A time of deep snow is the most favorable season, as the rocks are then covered, and a natural bed is formed to receive the tree. When fallen, it is examined, and if to appearance it be sound, it is cut in the proportion of three feet in length to every inch of its diameter, for a mast; but if intended for a bow-sprit or a yard, it is cut shorter. If it be not sound throughout, or if it break in falling, it is cut into logs for the saw-mill.

When a mast is to be drawn on the snow, one end is placed on a sled, shorter, but higher than the common sort, and rests on a strong block, which is laid across the middle of the sled.

In descending a long and steep hill they have a contrivance to prevent the load from making too rapid a descent. Some of the cattle are placed behind it; a chain which is attached to their yokes is brought forward and fastened to the hinder end of the load, and the resistance which is made by these cattle checks the descent. This operation is called _tailing_. The most dangerous circ.u.mstance is the pa.s.sing over the top of a sharp hill, by which means the oxen which are nearest to the tongues are sometimes suspended, till the foremost cattle can draw the mast so far over the hill as to give them opportunity to recover the ground. In this case the drivers are obliged to use much judgment and care to keep the cattle from being killed. There is no other way to prevent this inconvenience than to level the roads.

=_David Ramsay, 1749-1815._= (Manual, p. 491.)

From "The History of the Revolution in South Carolina."

=_114._= FEELING OF THE PROVINCE TOWARD GREAT BRITAIN.

In South Carolina, an enemy to the Hanoverian succession, or to the British const.i.tution, was scarcely known. The inhabitants were fond of British manners even to excess. They for the most part, sent their children to Great Britain for education, and spoke of that country under the endearing appellation of Home. They were enthusiasts for that sacred plan of civil and religious happiness under which they had grown up and flourished.... Wealth poured in upon them from a thousand channels. The fertility of the soil generously repaid the labor of the husbandman, making the poor to sing, and industry to smile, through every corner of the land. None were indigent but the idle and unfortunate. Personal independence was fully within the reach of every man who was healthy and industrious. The inhabitants, at peace with all the world, enjoyed domestic tranquility, and were secure in their persons and property.

They were also completely satisfied with their government, and wished not for the smallest change in their political const.i.tution.

In the midst of these enjoyments, and the most sincere attachment to the mother country, to their king and his government, the people of South Carolina, without any original design on their part, were step by step drawn into an extensive war, which involved them in every species of difficulty, and finally dissevered them from the parent state.

... Every thing in the colonies contributed to nourish a spirit of liberty and independence. They were planted under the auspices of the English const.i.tution in its purity and vigor. Many of their inhabitants had imbibed a largo portion of that spirit which brought one tyrant to the block, and expelled another from his dominions. They were communities of separate, independent individuals, for the most part employed in cultivating a fruitful soil, and under no general influence but of their own feelings and opinions; they were not led by powerful families, or by great officers in church or state.... Every inhabitant was, or easily might be, a freeholder. Settled on lands of his own, he was both farmer and landlord. Having no superior to whom he was obliged to look up, and producing all the necessaries of life from his own grounds, he soon became independent. His mind was equally free from all the restraints of superst.i.tion. No ecclesiastical establishment invaded the rights of conscience, or lettered the free-born mind. At liberty to act and think as his inclination prompted, he disdained the ideas of dependence and subjection.

=_Henry Lee,[34] 1736-1818._=

From "Memoirs" of the War in the South.

=_115._= CLARKE'S SERVICES AGAINST THE INDIANS.

JOHN RODGERS CLARKE, colonel in the service of Virginia, against our neighbors the Indians in the revolutionary war, was among our best soldiers, and better acquainted with the Indian warfare than any officer in our army. This gentleman, after one of his campaigns, met in Richmond several of our cavalry officers, and devoted all his leisure in ascertaining from them the various uses to which horse were applied, as well as the manner of such application. The information he acquired determined him to introduce this species of force against the Indians, as that of all others the most effectual.

By himself, by Pickens, and lately by Wayne, was the accuracy of Clarke's opinion justified....

The Indians, when fighting with infantry, are very daring. This temper of mind results from his consciousness of his superior fleetness; which, together with his better knowledge of woods, a.s.sures to him extrication out of difficulties, though desperate. This is extinguished when he finds that, he is to save himself from the pursuit of horse, and with its extinction falls that habitual boldness.

[Footnote 34: In the revolutionary war he was distinguished as a cavalry officer, and subsequently, in political life, as a writer and speaker.]

=_116._= THE CAREER OF CAPTAIN KIRKWOOD.

The State of Delaware furnished one regiment only; and certainly no regiment in the army surpa.s.sed it in soldiership. The remnant of that corps, less thaw two companies, from the battle of Camden, was commanded by Captain Kirkwood, who pa.s.sed through the war with high reputation; and yet, as the line of Delaware consisted of but one regiment, and that regiment was reduced to a captain's command. Kirkwood never could be promoted in regular routine--a very glaring defect in the organization of the army, as it gave advantages to parts of the same army denied to other portions of it. The sequel is singularly hard.

Kirkwood retired, upon peace, as a captain; and when the army under St.

Clair was raised to defend the west from the Indian enemy, this veteran resumed his sword as the eldest captain in the oldest regiment.

In the decisive defeat of the 4th of November,[35] the gallant Kirkwood fell, bravely sustaining his point of the action. It was the thirty-third time he had risked his life for his country; and he died as he had lived, the brave, meritorious, unrewarded Kirkwood.

[Footnote 35: St. Clair's defeat.]

=_Peter S. Duponceau,[36] 1760-1844._=

From "An Address."

=_117._= CHARACTER OF PENN.

WILLIAM PENN stands the first among the lawgivers whose names and deeds are recorded in history. Shall we compare him with Lycurgus, Solon, Romulus, those founders of military commonwealths, who organized their citizens in deadly array against the rest of their species, taught them to consider their fellow-men as barbarians, and themselves as alone worthy to rule over the earth?... But see William Penn, with weaponless hand, sitting down peaceably with his followers, in the midst of savage nations whose only occupation was shedding the blood of their fellow-men, disarming them by his justice, and teaching them, for the first time, to view a stranger without distrust. See them bury their tomahawks in his presence, so deep that man shall never be able to find them again. See them, under the shade of the thick groves of Coaquannock, extend the bright chain of friendship, and solemnly promise to preserve it as long as the sun and moon shall endure. See him then, with his companions, establishing his commonwealth on the sole basis of religion, morality, and universal love, and adopting, as the fundamental maxim of his government, the rule handed down to us from Heaven, "Glory to G.o.d on high, and on earth peace and good will towards men."

[Footnote 36: An eminent jurist and philologist, of French origin, but for many years a citizen of Philadelphia.]

=_Charles J. Ingersoll,[37] 1782-1862._=

From the "Historical Sketch" of the War of 1812.

=_118._= CALHOUN CHARACTERIZED

John Caldwell Calhoun was the same slender, erect, and ardent logician, politician, and sectarian, in the House of Representatives in 1814 that he is in the Senate of 1847. Speaking with aggressive aspect, flashing eye, rapid action and enunciation, unadorned argument, eccentricity of judgment, unbounded love of rule, impatient, precipitate, kind temper, excellent in colloquial attractions, caressing the young, not courting rulers; conception, perception, and demonstration quick and clear, with logical precision arguing paradoxes, and carrying home conviction beyond rhetorical ill.u.s.tration; his own impressions so intense as to discredit, scarcely listen to, any other suggestions; well educated and informed.

[Footnote 37: A native of Pennsylvania; long conspicuous in the law, literature, and political life.]

=_119._= BATTLE OF CHIPPEWA.

In a fair national trial of the military faculties, courage, activity, and fort.i.tude, discipline, gunnery, and tactics, for the first time the palm was awarded by Englishmen to Americans over Englishmen. Without fortuitous advantage the Americans proved too much for the redoubtable English, though superior in number, therefore universally arrogating to themselves even with inferior numbers, a mastery but faintly questioned by most Americana; no accident to depreciate the triumph of the younger over the older nation; no more fortune than what favors the bravest.

Physical and even corporeal national characteristics, did not escape comparison in this normal contest. The American rather more active and more demonstrative than his ancestors, many of the officers of imposing figure, Scott and McNeil particularly, towering with gigantic stature above the rest, stood opposed in striking contrast to the short, thick, brawny, burly Briton, hard to overcome.... The Marquis of Tweedale, with his st.u.r.dy, short person, and stubborn courage, represented the British.... Even the names betokened at once consanguinity and hostility. Scott, McNeill, and McRee, in arms against Gordon, Hay, and Maconochie. And the harsh Scotch nomenclature, compared with the more euphonious savage Canada, Chippewa, Niagara, which latter modern English prosody has corrupted from the measure of Goldsmith's Traveller:--

"Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, And Niagara stuns with thundering sound."

... Mankind impressed by numbers and bloodshed, regard the second more extensive battle near the falls of Niagara, on the 25th of the same month, between the same parties with British reinforcements, known as the battle of Bridgewater, as more important than its precursor.... The victory of Chippewa was the resurrection or birth of American arms, after their prostration by so long disuse, and when at length taken up again, by such continual and deplorable failures, that the martial and moral influence of the first decided victory opened and characterized an epoch in the annals and intercourse of the two kindred and rival nations, whose language is to be spoken, as their inst.i.tutions are rapidly spreading, throughout most of mankind. Fought between only some three or four thousand men in both armies, at a place remote from either of their countries, the battle of Chippewa may not bear vulgar comparison with the great military engagements of modern Europe.

... The charm of British military invincibility was as effectually broken, by a single brigade, as that of naval supremacy was by a single frigate, as much as if a large army or fleet had been the agent.

=_Henry M. Brackenridge,[38] 1786-._= (Manual, p. 505.)

From "Recollections of the West."

=_120._= OLD ST. GENEVIEVE, IN MISSOURI.